Chapter 13
AVAH
The early morning air holds a crispness that makes a six a.m. run the only sensible option. I need to be out and back before the August sun turns Skylark into a high-altitude tanning bed, but my real motivation has nothing to do with cardiovascular health or endorphins.
Not many people are out and about on Main Street at this time of day, which means fewer curious gazes to mark my fall from polished marketing executive to couch-surfing cautionary tale.
I’m not hiding, though.
Who am I kidding? Sloane’s apartment has become my command center for complete reality avoidance. I’ve picked up a boatload of buzzwords from the self-help podcasts I listen to while stress-baking most of the day. I can tell myself I’m regrouping and giving myself space to process.
But my refusal to face the world is less Insta-inspirational.
The story Jon spun when he got back to town without me has taken root.
I can feel it in the way people I’ve known for years suddenly become very interested in their phones when they spot me on the sidewalk.
It doesn’t help that I won’t let my book club friends tell my side of the story.
But as willing as I am to defend the people I care about, I’m not at all comfortable being on the receiving end of that same support. What if I’m not worth the effort?
My running shoes hit the sidewalk in a rhythm that matches my racing thoughts. I need to focus on a job, apartment, and future—the holy trinity of problems I’ve been ignoring while pouring all my anxious energy into baked goods nobody asked for.
The marketing career I worked so hard to cultivate is dead in the water.
Jon and his father have connections everywhere, and Edward Clark is the kind of man who’d salt the earth before he gave a pass to someone who embarrassed his family.
Every networking contact I’ve cultivated over the years has gone suspiciously silent, with emails unanswered and LinkedIn messages ignored.
The professional reputation I spent a decade building, wrecked in a matter of weeks.
The storage room in the back of the bookstore is loaded with the personal belongings Sloane collected from Jon’s house because I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) face him. Did I send my friend, who’s still recovering from cancer treatments, to do my dirty work? Yes. Yes, I did.
Sloane offered, and I accepted so fast the words tripped over themselves leaving my mouth.
I hate to admit it, but I’m a coward at my core.
It’s why I stayed after the first time he grabbed my wrist so hard it bruised skin.
And the second and third and all the times after, each one followed by apologies that got less convincing.
Even though the physical marks have healed, I’ll carry what he did to me forever.
More importantly, what I let him do. A deep, shameful part of me believed that behavior was acceptable because it’s what my father did to my mom for years.
Verbal and physical abuse followed by make-up gifts or cold silences that lasted for days.
You can know with your brain that certain things are wrong and that love isn’t supposed to hurt.
But chaotic cruelty was the water I swam in my whole life, so I’m not sure my body knows how to recognize safety.
It mistakes calm for boring or waits for the other shoe to drop. Because the other shoe always drops.
So why do I think of Jeremy every time the word safe surfaces?
It feels like another form of dysfunction because he’s dangerous in ways I can’t articulate, even to myself.
I know with the same certainty I know my own name that Jeremy would never raise a hand to me.
But he’s a threat all the same—to both the walls I’ve spent years constructing, and the parts of me I’ve buried so deep it’s easy to forget they exist.
His eyes held a mixture of hurt and hunger that made goosebumps flare along my spine when he confronted me about ghosting him after our night together.
But in the next breath, he demanded that I go to dinner with him and the Johnsons, as if what happened between us in Bora Bora entitles him to my cooperation.
I’m done feeling entitled to anyone.
But God, the longing in his voice when he said I need you. Like I’m the only person in the world who could give him what he wanted.
No man has ever looked at me the way Jeremy does.
It’s nowhere near the ruthless control Jon masked as desire or the calculating assessment my father deployed when evaluating people’s usefulness.
Jeremy looks at me like my sharp edges don’t scare him, and maybe he wants to get close enough to be cut.
I know he’s still in town. Sloane invited me to join them for dinner at his house outside of town. He told me a little more about it when we were walking on the beach, and it sounded like it might be the place that most felt like home to him.
But I don’t necessarily want to sit across a table and pretend the memory of the way he held me when I came apart isn’t seared into my brain, not to mention my heart.
Besides, I’m not even curious about seeing his house.
Liar.
A figure steps directly into my path, and I stumble to a stop with my heart hammering from more than exertion. Adrenaline floods my system in a familiar fight-or-flight response that recedes almost instantly when I realize there’s no threat.
The woman blocking the sidewalk looks like Betty White’s mountain cousin, white hair wispy around a round face, and faded overalls under a flannel shirt that’s seen better decades.
Winnie Keller owns The Sugar Shack, a Skylark institution for longer than I’ve been alive.
Bright pink reading glasses are perched low on her nose, and her posture tells me she saw me coming and positioned herself for this confrontation.
“You’re sabotaging my business.”
I guess we’re skipping right past good morning? Noted.
“Excuse me?” I feign shock even though I know exactly what she’s talking about.
“All those cinnamon rolls and cookies you’ve been pumping out of Sloane’s kitchen.” Despite her grandmotherly exterior, Winnie’s sharp eyes pin me in place like a butterfly on a corkboard. “Nobody’s gonna buy from me when you’re filling their bellies for free.”
My cheeks flush as I think about the multiple containers I’ve sent out through Sloane to feed bookstore customers, friends of friends, anyone she could flag down on Main Street. I’ve been hiding in her apartment while she’s dealt baked goods to half of Skylark. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“Get a new hobby.” Winnie folds her arms across her flannel like a general assessing an insubordinate soldier. “Knitting, pottery, competitive axe throwing—I don’t care. But stop giving away product that competes with my livelihood.”
A snippy retort rises automatically in my throat because I’m just trying to cope. To keep my hands busy so my brain shuts up for five minutes. But I don’t want to add to my reputation by handing a beat-down to one of the Golden Girls.
“I thought Sloane was joking when she told me you were upset. I didn’t mean to hurt your business.”
Winnie’s expression doesn’t soften, but her tone loses some of its bite when she says, “I heard you dumped your fiancé.”
Because the news has spread through Skylark like wildfire. I’m the unhinged bitch who walked out on him in paradise for no reason.
“That’s right.”
I brace for the judgment of yet another person who thinks I’m just the girl who made a scene. She studies me for a long moment, and although the thin scar from where I hit the coffee table is hidden under my ball cap, I have a feeling she’s seeing more than I want her to.
“I never trusted that man.” She sniffs. “Anyone who won’t take even a bite of something sweet is shady if you ask me.”
A laugh escapes before I can stop it. Jon was so fucking proud of his obsessive focus on macros and measured portions.
He hated my baking, and God forbid I indulged in those empty calories.
I internalized his disapproval without even realizing it when I started hiding in the bathroom to enjoy a cookie in peace.
Maybe that’s why I can’t stop baking now.
“He wasn’t really a dessert person.”
“I think the precise term is shady AF.” Winnie’s mouth curves at the corners, and the tension in my shoulders eases slightly because it’s good to know someone in this town isn’t buying Jon’s story. Maybe she’s not the only one.
“I should get going.” I step to the side, ready to continue my run, away from the complicated feelings this conversation is stirring up.
“So you know, I’m looking for a new job, so I probably won’t have as much time for stress baking anyway.
” The self-deprecating edge in my voice makes me cringe a little.
Jeez, even when I’m trying to be conciliatory, my default setting is defensive sarcasm.
“And if I don’t find one right away, I’ll take up something that doesn’t cut into your profit margins. ”
“You could work at The Sugar Shack.”
I blink. “What?”
“You heard me.” Winnie tilts her head. “I need help, part-time to start. You clearly know your way around a kitchen.”
“I’m not a professional baker.”
Her laugh is dry as cornmeal. “Neither was I until I bought the place. My husband died the same year my youngest left for college. I lost both of them in the span of three months, one to an aneurysm and one to UCLA.” I catch the sound of vintage grief underneath her steady tone.
“I know what it’s like to have too much time on your hands and too many feelings that need somewhere to go.
I found this shop and poured everything I had into it. ”
She pauses, glancing behind her at the curling white letters on the glass and the window boxes full of cheerful flowers.
“I’ve got another baker, JP, who takes at least three shifts a week.
That helps, but to be honest, these old bones aren’t interested in four a.m. anymore, and I’d like to slow down some. ” Another pause. “Maybe a lot.”
The offer for a job that doesn’t require polishing myself back into someone I’m not sure I want to be anymore is unexpected…and a bit terrifying.
I search for the right words to describe the metrics by which I’ve measured my worth for years. The boxes everyone expects me to tick. “I need to find a real job.”
Winnie’s eyebrows rise toward her white hairline. “Talk to me about how real it is when your alarm goes off at three thirty in the morning.”
Despite the way my stomach dips, I smile.
“Oh, and there’s an apartment above the shop that’s available,” she adds like she’s just remembering. “My last tenant moved out a month ago. It’s furnished with the basics, so if you want to take a break from Sloane’s couch...”
My smile falters. “How do you know I’m sleeping on her couch?”
“Small town, honey.”
Right. And I’m a woman sleeping on her cancer-patient friend’s sofa, churning out baked goods like I’m possessed by the spirit of Betty Crocker and running at dawn to avoid being judged.
My gut churns at the thought of another job where I feign interest and play politics and pretend to be someone I’m not.
I spent a long time trying to be what other people wanted, and when I couldn’t, falling back on the familiar role of the snarky bitch who never let anyone see her bleed.
Until one night on a tropical island changed all that.
Maybe it’s time to be someone else.
“Can I move in today and start tomorrow?” I ask before I lose my nerve.
Winnie’s eyes widen, and then she nods. “That would work great.” Her gaze sharpens for a moment, more seasoned business owner than benevolent grandma. “But no more giving away the product. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Winnie turns for the door of her shop, then looks back over her shoulder.
“You’re worth more than free, Avah.”
She walks into the bakery before I can respond, the bells above the door jingling.
I stand there on the sidewalk with the morning sun bathing the whole of downtown in its golden glow.
Worth more than free.
The words echo in the hollow space behind my ribs where my confidence used to live before Jon chipped it away piece by piece.
Before my father taught me that love came with conditions and my mother taught me that survival meant becoming whatever the men in your life wanted you to be.
I might not know how to find my joy, but hope feels like a pretty good place to start.
I sure hope I can live up to Winnie’s expectation and prove that I’m worth more than free.